Rot in private schools
Sridhar Rajagopalan
Public debate in India bemoans the lot of government schools. The recent
Annual Status of Education Report study underlines these concerns. The
implicit assumption is that all’s well with private ‘English-medium’
schools. Between February and April 2006, we administered specially prepared
tests to about 32,000 students of classes IV, VI and VIII of 142
English-medium schools in Kolkata, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Bangalore.
These schools were those perceived by the public to be the leading schools
of their cities.
An analysis of the results of the study suggests that even in these
‘top’ schools, students are not learning well and with real understanding – their
learning is often superficial and based on recall of bookish facts. Probably
more disturbing was that these children scored lower than the children of 43
countries in an international achievement test. Results showing poor
learning in government schools are not new, but large-scale studies
involving top private Englishmedium schools are rare. So who’s responsible
for this sorry state of affairs?
The first tendency is to blame schools and to blame children. After all,
they charge high fees and it is expected that they should make children
learn well. Next in the firing line is government. Even though these are
private schools the government dictates the textbooks, board exams and
salaries of teachers. However, our experience of working closely with
schools and researching the issue suggests that blame must fall not just on
schools, teachers and government, but also the boards of education, parents,
tuition centres, corporates and even general citizens.
Let us start with the boards. The CBSE, ICSE and state boards are
responsible for setting test papers, correcting them and announcing results.
If there has been a dilution of standards, if questions asked are too
mechanical, if students score above 90 per cent and still count themselves
as failures, the boards are responsible for this. Parents usually see
themselves as victims of a system that is uncaring and pressures them, but
it is they who have perpetrated and strengthened this system. Parents goad
their wards to score higher showing scant care for real learning. Tuition
classes have virtually become a parallel system of schooling in a situation
where nothing matters more than guidebooks, marks and exams.
Educational experts and researchers are often guilty of not trying
enough to get their word out. To take one example, educational research is
almost unanimous in the recommendation that primary education should be in
the mother tongue, and not a language unfamiliar to the child. Yet
researchers do not try enough to convey this. Of course, schools and
teachers are also responsible. They tend to see themselves as powerless,
caught between the boards, parents and tuition classes, and do not perceive
themselves as having the power to transform society.
The rest of us are not free from blame either. We pay our taxes and 2
per cent education cess, but we condone a lot of what goes on in the name of
education, including huge salary differentials in education compared to
corporates, because we are too busy to make a difference. If there is one
thing our educational system lacks the most, it is a connection with real
life, and who better than practitioners can provide that link? But that
would require an involvement with and taking responsibility for the system
we love to blame.
An acceptance that it is we, collectively, who have got ourselves into
the current mess, can help us get out of it. It is not as if attempts have
not been made to change things, but we have not allowed those efforts to
reach a critical mass. We are part of a complex system and such systems have
a dangerously effective way of neutralising efforts to change the status
quo. Yet this can be changed. This acknowledgement and a willingness to
challenge old assumptions and stereotypes, rather than trying to fix blame,
may be the right place to start.
The writer heads Educational Initiatives.